[haberman]

Classifying my position is not the same as answering it.

Suppose an anti-vaxxer says "there are two types of people: type A who believe vaccination is a personal choice and type B who believe that everyone has a duty to vaccinate when they can."

If you make a case for why people should vaccinate, and the anti-vaxxer says "oh look, I spotted a type B person," that isn't an actual response to the argument.

[romaniv]

Classifying my position is not the same as answering it.

Classifying your position shows that there is no point in answering it. In other words, the important thing here is not whether you're being classified, but why and how. You analogy is invalid.

And no, I am not going to directly address your original post either. What is your actual point within the context of this particular newpost anyway? From what I see, you're defending a rather boring dismissal of the original article. A long, though-out, well-written article with tons of interesting observations.

[haberman]

> What is your actual point within the context of this particular newpost anyway?

I was curious whether anyone had compelling reasons for believing in the idea of objective or absolute meaningfulness. What I have learned is that the reasons people have offered are extremely weak, in my opinion.

[romaniv]

If you don't know how to count, you learn arithmetic from people who do. Nobody owes you a proof that it "objectively exists". Neither does denying it constitute a valid disproof of every theorem in existence. Such is the nature of abstract concepts.

[haberman]

> Nobody owes you a proof that it "objectively exists".

And I don't owe anybody belief in weak arguments.

> Neither does denying it constitute a valid disproof of every theorem in existence.

Thomas Aquinas also offered "proofs" of God's existence that few people outside the Catholic faith take very seriously. For example you can read what Bertrand Russell wrote about him. Other arguments that purport to have "proved" things about religion (and this argument only barely escapes being religious in nature) rarely stand up to rational scrutiny, IMO.

[lmm]

Nonsense. You teach someone arithmetic by showing them concrete instances where it applies, counting apples or sticks or so on. You demonstrate that the abstract thing exists because there's something the same about putting two apples and two more apples together or putting two stones and two more stones together, and by observing one you can learn something about the other.

[gambler]

"You teach someone arithmetic by showing them concrete instances where it applies [...]"

What do you suppose the article above is doing?

[lmm]

I don't think the article makes any claim to objectivity.